Languages Heard in the City

The city had an interesting variety of ethnic and cultural identities that defined the various, immigrant characteristics, which bore their imprint on the local businesses, restaurants, movie houses, churches, schools, newspapers, popular music, and more. Spending a Saturday morning or afternoon shopping in Kearney Square and along Merrimack, Central, and Bridge streets was a delight to the human ear that was accustomed or attuned to foreign sounds, tones, and expletives.

A streaming horde of humanity’s many flavors greeted the surprised visitor with good (mostly, good) humor as eager searchers for life’s material essentials crisscrossed one another. The race was on to reach a harmonious conclusion to the many, unfinished, purchasing tasks of the previous week.

French, Greek, Polish, Irish, Portuguese, and, later, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cambodian, etc., were added to the late Victorian architecture of the early 1900s in New England, to clearly enhance the shopper’s experience in the downtown region. Consider the following examples: “Toi, fais attention aux machines (voitures) dans la rue!” “Hey, watch out for the cars in the road!” And, in German, “Achtung, es gibt Wagen in der Straße.”

Yes, we were blessed with a broad variety of linguistic affluence, yet, the average citizen could always fall back on the “lingua franca” of the times, English as spoken by Lowellians!